Disco Zoo: Top 10 tips and tricks to grow your animal population as fast as possible!

The definitive tip and trick guide to Disco Zoo: Rescue smarter, party harder, and rack up coins faster!

In Disco Zoo you play the part of a zoo owner that's working on building the best zoo anyone's ever seen. To do that you need to collect animals in order to keep your patrons, and news reporters, happy. The more animals you collect, the bigger your zoo gets and the more species you have access to. It's important to know where to spend your DiscoBux and where to save them — and what to use your hard earned in-game coins on. That's where iMore comes in. Follow along for some tips and tricks on how to grow your zoo population as fast as possible!

1. Learn animal patterns early on, or buy the ZooPedia

When you're on rescues to collect animals for your zoo, you have to collect all tiles of an animal in order to rescue it. Luckily animals keep the same tile pattern each time. So either remember them or buy to ZooPedia for a one time purchase of $2.99. You can view patterns for farm animals for free any time but further levels require the ZooPedia to reference patterns, unless you memorize them of course.

If you don't think you can remember all of them, it may be a good investment at only $2.99 one time.

2. Animal tiles are almost always connected to another

Remember that animals almost always piggy back off others. So once you complete one or find a tile, look to the immediate ones surrounding them for suspects that start the next animal pattern. Sometimes there's only one way tiles could fall depending on what kinds of animals are left. I've seen this theory not hold true a few times but more than often, animals for some reason seem to be tiled in close quarters to one another.

3. Wait to start a disco until you have a good stock of animals

Discos cost DiscoBux and there's no faster way to waste them than to start Disco parties before you really have enough animals to benefit from them. Instead, spend some money on leveling up your animals and rescuing new ones. Then once your zoo is earning a decent income on its own, Disco away to earn tons of cash.

4. Only use DiscoBux during rescues if mythical animals are involved

Rescues are generally not a great use of your DiscoBux — unless mythical creatures are involved. Typically they end up being good money makers and if you're sure you can collect one with your next five turns, go for it. If not, just pay for another rescue in coins since those are a heck of a lot easier to come by than DiscoBux.

5. Be strategic during rescues

If you're performing a rescue it's always best to be strategic about it. For example, if you have one animal left to collect and it requires four attempts but you only have three left, it's best to try and aim for coins instead of the animal. Since you can't collect it anyways, don't waste attempts trying. Instead, worry about building back up your coin stash. This is where knowing patterns comes in handy. You can then avoid or capture animals in fewer turns.

6. Find missing animals to gain rewards

When you're in the main zoo area be sure to check the top right corner of your screen for notifications. Every once in a while your animals will escape to other pens and the zoo keeper alerts you. Find them quickly and you'll get rewarded. Typically the reward is a few thousand coins or even better, DiscoBux. Watch for this kinds of challenges as they're easy ways to rack up money and DiscoBux without spending real money.

7. Go back to early rescues to build up your animal population cheaper

Levels like the farm are much cheaper per rescue than the others. It makes perfect sense to use these lower levels in order to ramp up your animal population. It costs less money and earns you more as you go since you're adding animals. This is especially useful if you're trying to unlock another rescue and you're short by just a few animals.

8. Watch videos for free rescues whenever you can

If you run out of attempts during a recuse you are presented with a few options. Every few hours you're given the option to watch video ads to get 5 free attempts. This is by far the easiest way to earn animals without wasting in-game or real money. The ads aren't that long. Watch them whenever you have an option to.

9. Keep animals awake while you're playing and before you quit the game

Animals don't make you nearly as much money when they're sleeping so keep an eye on them while you're playing. During rescues you're alerted if there are animals sleeping under the Return to Zoo button. Be sure to hop back out and wake them up whenever you can. And before you quit the game for a period of time, make sure all your animals are awake.

10. Make sure selling off your animals is worth it

Sometimes other zoos will offer to buy animals off of you. Before doing so, just make sure it's a fair trade. Common animals are relatively easy to get so it makes sense to sell those. But if you have animals that you've leveled up all the way, selling them sometimes doesn't make sense considering they're earning you money continuously.

Your tips?

If you play Disco Zoo regularly, what have you done that's helped you build your animal population faster? Be sure to let me know in the comments!